by André Depienne

McKinley Morganfield grew up near the Mississippi tributary, Deer Creek. Because he loved to play in its muddy waters, his grandmother gave him the nickname Muddy. Waters was added later, when he started performing. After his mother's death in 1928 he lived with his grandmother in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

In his early teens, he learned to play the harmonica and soon after began to perform in Juke Joints (informal establishments featuring music, dancing, gambling and drinking, primarily operated by African Americans in the southeastern United States).

His musical companions were his friends Scott Bowhandle on guitar, Son Simms on the fiddle and Louis Ford on the mandolin.

In 1932 he bought his first guitar and Scott Bowhandle taught him the basic skills of playing. In the years to come, Muddy Waters became a master of the bottleneck technique.

For a 1941 documentary about American folk music in the South that was commissioned by the Library of Congress, Muddy Waters recorded several songs.

Two of those songs (Country Blues and I Be's Troubled) were put on a shellac record for documentary purposes, and were never published.

In 1943, Waters moved to Chicago where he lived with his sister and worked in a paper factory while also performing as a Blues musician. Since the clubs were mostly crowed and therefore loud, he soon traded his acoustic for an electric guitar.

Big Bill Broonzy got him a job at the Blues club Sylvio's, where other great musicians like Sonny Boy Williamson III. would perform.

Muddy Waters made his first commercial recordings in 1946, but they weren't much of a success. In 1948 he had his first regional hits with I Can’t Be Satisfied and I Feel Like Going Home that had a different sound than the Blues songs of that time.

When the piano player Otis Spann joined Muddy Waters' band in 1953, he changed his sound and concentrated more on his singing than his guitar playing.

Countless concerts and hits like I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man (1954), Just Make Love To Me (1954), Mannish Boy (1955) or Trouble No More (1956) made him the King of Chicago Blues.

A lot of famous rock stars call themselves Muddy Waters fans and name him as one of their influences.

When the London Marquee-Club celebrated its 25 year anniversary on the 29th of April, 1983, artists like Alexis Korner, Charlie Watts or Bill Wyman played Muddy Waters songs without knowing it was already an obituary for him.

The next day came the announcement of Muddy Waters’ death.

The Rolling Stone magazine listed him #17 of the 100 Best Musicians Of All Time. In 1980, the six-time Grammy winner was added to the Blues Hall Of Fame and in 1987 to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

His song Rollin' Stone lent its name to the band The Rolling Stones and the music magazine Rolling Stone.